Scientists say they have nearly all the tools to make artificial life

Scientists say they are finally ready to try their hand at creating life. If they succeed, scientists claim humanity will enter a new age of "living technology". This news, however, is sure to shock and outrage many people's religious and cultural belief systems.

Scientists have been talking of a new world of ultra-small living machines, where made-to-order cells heal the body, clean up pollutants, transform electronics and communication.

The researchers say it may be possible to make jumpers that mend themselves. Or computers that fix their own glitches. Though some experts see this new technology as providing unlimited benefits, others worry about the moral appropriateness of human-made life and the introduction of new species with the potential to evolve into creatures that could run amok.

"It's certainly true that we are tinkering with something very powerful here," said artificial-life researcher Steen Rasmussen of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. "But there's no difference between what we do here and what humans have always done when we invented fire, transistors and ways to split the atom," he said.

Concern is growing as more than 100 laboratories study processes involved in the creation of life, and scientists say for the first time that they have just about all the pieces they need to begin making non-living chemicals come alive. Many do not, however, address the moral issues of scientifically creating life. Many anti-artificial life campaigners say the scientists are too busy asking 'can we do it?' and forget about considering; 'should we do it?'

"The ability to make new forms of life from scratch is going to have a profound impact on society, much of it positive, but some of it potentially negative," said Mark Bedau, professor of philosophy and humanities at Reed College in Portland, Ore., and editor-in-chief of the Artificial Life Journal.

"Aside from the vast scientific insights that will come, there will be huge commercial and economic benefits, so much so that it's hard to contemplate in concrete detail what many of them will be," he said.

But the first artificial life is likely to offend people's religious and cultural beliefs.

"People from many different backgrounds have special views about what life is: how it originates, the special sanctity it has, the special dignity it deserves," Bedau said. "The ability to make new forms of life will perturb all of that. We need to think through the implications and how we are going to react to them."

Fronting the drive is the EU's Programmable Artificial Cell Evolution project, recently established with a grant of about $9 million. This month PACE is scheduled to open the first institution devoted exclusively to creating artificial life, called the European Center for Living Technology, in Venice staffed by European and U.S. researchers.

The progress of all the scientists in this field will be scrutinised thoroughly by the media, and the debate will be sure to heat-up as the scientists get closer to achieving their goal.